


Vulnerability

by The_Year_of_the_Beast (ScrawlingStories)



Category: The Midnight Beast (Band)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, a tangible amount of Author Self-Gratification, my first fanfic so be gentle pls, not intended to be romantic but ambiguous enough if you need it to be ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrawlingStories/pseuds/The_Year_of_the_Beast
Summary: Just a bad day. They all have those sometimes, about various this’s and that’s, sometimes worse than others. Although Dru, it seems to Stef, has more and worse than anyone else’s fair share, and far too often.





	Vulnerability

**Author's Note:**

> Y'know, if you had told me only a few weeks ago that the first story I would post to Ao3 EVER was gonna be a quickly-written, near-embarrassingly self-indulgent fluff piece about The Midnight Beast, I probably would have laughed in your face.
> 
> And yet, here we now are, and here it now is. x,3
> 
> (Also it's not really relevant to the story but I had [Boys Will Be Boys by Benny](https://youtu.be/G8y-WyBrNgQ) on repeat while I was working on this, so if you need a song to put on while you read, I'd rec that one~ :3c)

“Ash, have you seen Dru?”

Ash looks up from his phone with his eyebrows pinched together in thought. “He’s been here since before I got here, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah but I can’t find him anywhere in the house, and he isn’t answering his phone.”

“Maybe he went out or something then?”

“What, like took a walk? Without saying anything to either of us? He knows we have Beast stuff to do today.”

Ash shrugs and goes back to his phone. “I dunno, man. But if he’s not _in_ the house then by definition he kind of has to be outside of it.”

Stef makes a face and gives Ash a solid thump on the ear for the sass as he makes his way to the front door. “Well, I’ll go have a look around then, I guess. He probably hasn’t gone too far.”

Ash is still glaring at him and holding his afflicted ear in indignation as he calls, “Well don’t you go get lost too, asshole!”

“If we’re not back in a half hour, send in the Armed Forces!” Stef says with a laugh as he steps outside. “Or, yanno, just come get lost as well. Either one~”

Ash makes another face and Stef grins as he shuts the front door behind him. He turns around and props his hands on his hips, surveying the street before him. Honestly there isn’t much of interest as far as he can see from here—at least nothing that he thinks Dru would be drawn to wandering off to. So where the hell is he?

Stef sighs, then shrugs to himself and decides to just start walking. If that’s what Dru had done then maybe he can find him the same way. They’ve been good friends for over ten years now—surely he knows him well enough to suss out where he might choose to wander off to when he was supposed to be working. (Though that was normally more Ash’s habit than either of the other two.) He figures his odds of actually finding him this way are low, but they aren’t getting any work done without him anyways, so it’s not the worst case scenario if all he gets from this in the end is a stroll out in the nice weather.

And he certainly isn’t the only one taking advantage of the warm air and mostly-clear sky, if having to share the pavements and crosswalks with more people than usual is any indication, but he doesn’t particularly mind. He has to hold himself back from snickering out loud at one girl’s snarky comment that he half-accidentally eavesdrops on, and he almost gets beamed in the head with a stray basketball as he passes a small park. Thankfully it misses him by just a hair, and the kids are super grateful when he helps them get their ball back from the other side of the bustling street traffic. And had it not been for this exact small detour, his eyes wouldn’t have snagged on the figure sitting alongside a small service building a little ways into the park—a figure that Stef can tell even from this far off just so happens to be the very same Dru Wakely that he’s been searching for.

"Oh, there you are, Dru,” Stef says as he approaches him, taking in the sight of his friend hunched low over himself on the pavement. He doesn’t look up when Stef speaks, and Stef wonders if he can hear him at all with how deep-in-thought he looks—and not at all happy about it. Uh oh. “What're you doing all the way out here?”

It takes Dru a few moments to respond, and when he does speak his voice is so quiet that Stef has to strain to actually hear it all. “Just having a bad day.”

Ah.

Right.

"...Mind if I sit?"

Dru doesn’t answer for so long that Stef begins to take it as a ‘no’, but then he gives the smallest of nods that Stef absolutely would have missed if he hadn’t already been looking for it. So Stef settles in beside him on the rough concrete with the cool stone of the maintenance building at their backs, close enough that their shoulders and thighs touch, just a light, comforting pressure against one another. Stef doesn’t say anything else, the two of them merely sitting together in silence as their minds drift among the ambient sounds of park and city around them.

Just a bad day. They all have those sometimes, about various this’s and that’s, sometimes worse than others. Although Dru, it seems to Stef, has more and worse than anyone else’s fair share, and far too often. But there isn’t really much to do for it except be there for each other in what ways they can. Sometimes it’s talking it out, sometimes it’s distracting with stupidity or video games or alcohol—and sometimes it’s simply sitting together like this, silently supporting and comforting just by proximity as the wave runs its course.

After a while of not-uncomfortable silence Stef adjusts a bit, shifting just slightly so that he can rest his head on Dru's shoulder. He feels Dru tense up for one moment, two, three, before it drains out again with a long, silent sigh, followed by the unmistakable pressure of Dru resting his head on him in turn. A few moments later Stef feels Dru shiver, and then again, and again, and Stef realizes that he isn’t actually shivering at all, and the realization makes his heart sink all the way down into his stomach. But he pretends he doesn’t notice, because Dru is trusting him with this moment, one that he wouldn’t allow anyone else to see because he hates ‘making a scene’ with every conscious fiber of his being. So Stef pretends not to notice the way Dru is shaking beside him, the choked sounds he’s trying so hard to smother, and instead reaches over and takes Dru’s hand in his own. Dru grips back with enough strength to bruise, but Stef doesn’t even flinch, stroking his thumb soothingly across Dru’s knuckles as he trembles against him.

And eventually Dru’s grip softens, his shaking subsides, his breathing goes deep and even. He’s asleep, Stef realizes, and blinks a few times because now he’s stuck with his head at this angle for the next however-long stretch of time that Dru is asleep—but he doesn’t really mind. It’s for Dru, and if he’s going to go so far as to skip out on worktime, wander into a random park, and cry until he passes out in a technically-public scene—well, he must seriously need this rest right now. So Stef ignores the way his neck is already starting to ache and continues brushing the pad of his thumb over the bumps and ridges of Dru’s sleeping hand.

And despite everything that got them to this point, as they sit here, in this moment, Stef has never known anything closer to the definition of peaceful.

Birds are chirping in the trees above them and the sound of traffic is constant but reduced only to a distant hum punctuated by the occasional honk or squeal. The kids are still playing basketball back on the court a little ways across the park, and bursts of laughter and indignant shrieks carry far enough on the breeze for Stef to hear intermittently. He watches the distant shapes of color rush around for a long while—he really has no idea how long—and only looks away when another figure passes through his vision much closer and does a double-take at the two men leaning against the building.

And if Stef had been impressed with himself for somehow miraculously stumbling across Dru’s hiding place, there isn’t a word in the English language for how pleasantly baffled he is to see Ash staring down at them with the same expression. But Ash’s surprise melts into annoyance as quickly as it came, and he opens his mouth to start in on a (completely understandable) lecture just as Stef quickly presses the index finger of his free hand to his lips, raising his eyebrows in a silent plea to keep quiet. Ash snaps his mouth shut again with a barely-audible _clop!_ that makes Stef grin behind his finger, and the grin only grows as he watches Ash try to figure out how to silently convey what he needs to say. After a few minutes of unsuccessful miming and lip-reading—god, they really should’ve taken that sign language class—Ash gives up with a sigh and pulls out his phone, shaking it emphatically at Stef. Oh. Oops.

Moving as carefully as he can to not jostle Dru, Stef shimmies his phone out of his pocket and unlocks the screen. He’s met with several missed calls and messages from Ash asking where he was and if he’d found Dru yet, sprinkled with a few colorful insults for not responding. He honestly hadn’t even felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He offers a sheepish, apologetic smile, and Ash can only roll his eyes. He starts tapping at his phone screen, and Stef’s phone lights up a moment later.

_Well you found him clearly._

Stef makes a sarcastic _‘no, really?’_ face, and Ash mimes kicking him in the shin, a sure promise for later on when there isn’t a sleeping Dru to consider.

_Oh shut the fuck up. He wasn’t asleep when you found him was he?_

It takes longer to do with only one hand, but Stef manages to tap out a reply.

_No, but really down. A pretty rough Bad Day, you know?_

Ash’s face lights up with recognition as he reads the words, and the rest of the leftover annoyance visibly flushes out of him. He can’t be angry at that reason when he’s been there himself more times than he can count. He knows the feeling, or at least an equal comparison. And he knows as well as Stef that it has to be a particularly nasty wave for Dru to have gone off the way he did today.

_How much longer is he gonna sleep do you think?_

Stef shrugs his shoulders before he can stop himself, and though he catches it mid-way through it's still enough to stir Dru from his slumber. Ash strategically turns and quickly tiptoes away out of sight, not wanting to set off Dru’s making-a-scene alarms any more than they might already start as Dru begins remembering the situation he’s in. Stef can’t see his face, but judging by how long he’s taking to fully wake up again, Dru doesn’t seem to be all that bothered by it, actually. That’s a good sign, and it makes a warm feeling rise in Stef’s chest and another small smile tug at the corners of his lips.

"Sorry, I didn't even realized I'd dozed off," Dru mumbles apologetically, the words slurring groggily in his mouth, as he rubs the drowsiness from his eyes with the hand that isn’t still interlocked with Stef’s.

"It's cool," Stef says, and he hopes that Dru realizes that he truly means it.

"How long was I out?"

Stef stretches out his neck when Dru finally lifts his head, feeling the stiff muscles practically sighing with relief. He’s definitely going to feel that tomorrow. "Not too awful long. Don't worry about it, man. It seems like you really needed it."

Dru huffs, a single silent breath of laughter that Stef knows well. Another good sign. "Yeah,” he says quietly after a few moments, looking contemplative, “I did need this." He gives Stef's hand an acknowledging squeeze, and Stef smiles. "Thank you." And when he leans over to place the smallest of appreciative kisses on Stef's cheekbone, Stef can’t help but let the smile spread out into a full-blown grin.

“Well, you know how it is,” he quips cordially, and Dru shoots him a similarly cheeky look. “Wanna go find Ash and head back now?” Stef asks, bouncing their still-joined hands against his knee. “Maybe order a pizza, play some Call of Duty?"

"Yeah, that sounds pretty good right now, actually," Dru admits. “What about our workday, though?”

Stef shrugs and waves away the worry. “Ahh, there’s nothing so pressing that we can’t wait and do it later. Tonight is now for relaxing and recouping only, y'hear?”

Dru’s lips quirk in the tiniest beginnings of a smile, and Stef finally untangles their hands so he can stand up. He takes his time stretching out the rest of his muscles that had gotten stiff from sitting on the hard ground for so long, and when he turns back again he sees Dru still sitting in the same spot. Dru notices his questioning look almost immediately and offers the now-fully-formed small smile. "Actually, you go on ahead. It is a rather nice evening out. I think I wanna enjoy it for a few minutes longer, and then I’ll head back in."

And Stef has no qualms in believing his words, because even though he’s still sitting against the maintenance wall like he had been when Stef had found him, he’s now fully alert and responsive and looking up with an easy, small smile that actually reaches his eyes, and that’s really the final evidence that Stef needs to trust that the real Dru is back. So Stef nods in acceptance, for some reason feeling like he shouldn’t speak in this moment, and starts walking with a final wave goodbye.

He can see Ash waiting at a nearby picnic table, completely unaware of the handful of pigeons tottering around him as he scrolls through his phone. He’ll probably be ecstatic to hear the change of plans, Stef thinks to himself with a fond smile. And in an hour’s time they’ll all three be back in the flat, this whole incident all but forgotten in the back of their minds as they fill themselves with pizza and video games and stupid laughter. Everything isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be, so long as they have each other. And when they catch each other’s eyes in the late hours of the night, exchanging hazy smiles and unspoken words in the moments between bouts of laughter and untouched pizza crusts, there’s no doubt between the three of them that they always will.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp! There we go! My first fanfic ever published on this site--and it's _this._ x,3  
>  Honestly, "self-indulgent fluff piece" is really all I can even hope to call it, but I hope anyone else who might read it can enjoy it for what it is, too~ :3  
> Also just for the record, this story came about because I was in a Mood the other night & since I've recently gotten back into TMB even more deeply than back in the early days, I somehow ended up drabbling a stray hurt/comfort thought that turned into over 2000 words of fic in a record amount of time for me so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not gonna argue with my muse horse's mouth. (Wait--)
> 
> ((P.S. is this REALLY the first/only Midnight Beast fic on Ao3 as of the end of April 2017???? Or can I just not find any of the others? Because if I actually am breaking this seal then I'm gonNA CRY HOW CAN I BE THE FIRST HERE DON'T DO THIS TO ME Y'ALL I'M NOT READY FOR THIS RESPONSIBILITY--))


End file.
